Vicious Circle

I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “I might be able to get you what you need without going through a hospital or a practice. Can I use my mobile?”

“To call who?” I saw his fists clench: even without the gun, and even in the ravaged state he was in now, he was still a force to be reckoned with. I didn’t want to have to argue with him.

“A friend,” I said. “A very old friend. My landlady, in fact. Who by a very happy coincidence is currently doing the nasty with a doctor. She’s also got healing hands on her own account. Holistic medicine, kind of thing. So this is a two-for-one deal.” That phrase made me think of Susan Book—she’d said something similar about Juliet and me—and for a moment I felt a premonitory qualm.

Peace, on the other hand, relaxed slightly as he saw a way of squaring the circle.

“And she can be trusted?”

“Absolutely. She’s not even capable of telling a lie. It’s against her religion.”

“God-botherer?” Peace’s lip curled back in distaste, and he waved a hand over his midriff to indicate what the blanket now hid. “Those fucking Catholics did this to me.”

“No, Pen’s sort of a religion of one these days,” I said. “Believe me, she’s not going to shop you to the Anathemata.”

He gave a very faint nod, surrendering the point as though he was too weak to hammer it out anymore. “All right,” he said, “call her. But tell her to make sure nobody follows her. If she’s that close to you, they could be watching her, too.”

I called Pen at home. The phone rang six times, and then the answering machine kicked in. “Hi, this is Pamela Bruckner. I can’t come to the phone right now . . .” Pen picked up as the message was still playing, to my great relief. “Hello?” she said, her voice sounding fuzzy with sleep.

“Pen, it’s me. Sorry to wake you, but this is a bit of an emergency.”

“Fix? Where are you? It’s—”

“Two in the morning. I know, I know. Listen, you remember the state I was in when you found me on the doorstep? Well, I’m with someone else who’s had a bigger dose of the same thing, and he’s in a really bad way. Did that little Scottish guy leave any of those antibiotics lying around?”

“I don’t think so. But I can call Dylan. Where are you?”

“Way out west. Call him now and then call me back, okay.”

“Okay.”

She hung up. Pen gets the point quickly, bless her, and she doesn’t waste words. I turned back to Peace. “Do you want me to meet her somewhere else?” I asked. “She can pass the drugs on to me without finding out where you and Abbie are.”

“You said she might be able to do some good herself,” he reminded me.

“Yeah, I did say that.”

“Then let her come.”

He closed his eyes again, his breath coming quick and shallow now. He’d been holding on by pure willpower, and it was starting to falter now that he’d put himself in my hands. Not good: not good at all.

I felt a sensation like the epidermal prickling you get with pins and needles, and glanced up to find Abbie’s wraithlike form hovering beside me.

“Will my dad be okay?” she asked, her voice touching my ear without stirring the still air.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “He’s in a bad way. It’s not so much the wounds, it’s the infection.”

“Make him better,” Abbie whispered, sounding younger than her fourteen years. She’d never be older now.

“I’ll do my best,” I said, my own voice barely louder than hers.

The phone rang, smacking me out of unpleasant thoughts. It was Pen. I turned away from Abbie and Peace to take the call.

“Dylan said he’d come himself,” she told me. “He’s at home—in Pinner. He says he’s got some vancomycin there, but he’s not giving it away without seeing the patient. So if you tell me where you are, I can tell him and he can come and meet you.”

Chinese Whispers is a lousy game at the best of times. Peace had said it was okay to tell Pen: he hadn’t given me permission to bring in any third parties.

I glanced around, saw that Peace still had his eyes closed.

“Peace,” I called. He didn’t respond. I called again, but he seemed to be sleeping. At any rate, his eyes were still closed.

I thought it through, and decided that I didn’t have a choice. Without antibiotics, he wasn’t going to see the night out. I put the phone back to my ear.

“Okay,” I said. “Do you know Castlebar Hill?”

“No.”

“Maybe Dylan does. It’s almost local for him. Tell him to go to the top of the Uxbridge Road and take a right. Just before you get up to the golf course there’s a roundabout. I’m on it.”

“On the roundabout?”

“Yeah. It’s a big one. You have to park up on one of the side streets and walk in. There’s a building—the remains of a building. It burned down a few years back.”

“And that’s where you are? At two in the morning?”

“Don’t start.”

“Okay. I’ve told him it’s an emergency. He’ll get there as quick as he can.”

“We’re not going anywhere. Thanks, Pen.”

“You can pay me back by telling me the whole story.”

“If I survive it, I will.”